Written by Demetri Inembolidis

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ESPN blogger Henry Abbott has been on a mission to end tanking this past week.  He has blogged about it extensively and discussed it on his weekly podcast.  Abbott does not like that the NBA “rewards” bad teams with high draft picks.  

All of the ideas he has had that are intended to quell tanking would be detrimental to a lot of NBA teams.  If a team is bad, it need an infusion of talent to hopefully make it better.  Doing away with the lottery is going to almost guarantee that teams in less-than-desirable markets will lose the little hope that they have of becoming elite.  It is a bad idea and it opens the door for plenty of unknown and unintended consequences.  On the other hand, one has to wonder if limiting the lottery or losing it all together would help prevent games like the one that the Cavs played against the Knicks on Saturday night.  

The handful of people who decided to watch the matchup between the Cavs and Knicks instead of the Final Four were subjected to a combined shooting of 39.1% by both teams.  Cleveland had 13 assists compared to their 19 turnovers.  The lone block shot by the Cavs was from Omri Casspi.  The most pathetic statistic of all is that Antawn Jamison was the high scorer for the Cavs with 13 points on 33% shooting.  

The Cavs are in a position to draft high in the lottery despite vying for a playoff spot for much of the year.  One has to really question if the team is indeed tanking.  Injuries have been an issue and much of the game was essentially Antawn Jamison with a group of Developmental League players.  There is only so much winning a team that devoid of talent can accomplish.  As Abbott argued, tanking leads to bad basketball and that is not fair to fans who follow teams and pay money to go to games.  Having said that,  Where his argument fails is that the NBA cannot mandate that teams will be competitive down the stretch of the season.  There is not a system in the world that will make matches like the Cavs and Knicks not happen.  

The game featured poor shooting by both teams and a lot of turnovers.  Landry Fields alone had 6 miscues for the Knicks.  

Tristan Thompson’s play regressed from his most recent performance against the Bucks on Friday night.  Thompson played only 15:28 minutes and he did not see the floor in the entire fourth quarter.  Thompson was mostly non-existent in his limited time.  He finished the night with more fouls (4) than points (3) and only a single rebound.  

A lone bright spot for Cleveland was Donald Sloan.  He got his first start out of necessity and he held his own.  The numbers he recorded (10 points, 7 rebounds and 4 assists) were not phenomenal by any means, but he looked like an NBA player.  That is not always a given for guys who are called up from the Developmental League.

As Cavs fans are accustomed to after his short stint in Cleveland, Baron Davis did not make a lot of his shots early on.  What he did do was show off his great court vision and he even made a huge three point basket late in the fourth quarter.  The most impressive Knick was JR Smith.  He can either shoot a team into a loss or a win.  Against the Cavs, his shots were falling.  He came off the bench and finished with 20 points and 9 rebounds.

The Cavs have hit a wall and the best thing that can happen for the team is for the season to end soon.  They have not scored more than 85 points in a game since they put up 102 in an overtime loss against the Atlanta Hawks.  Since then, they are averaging 80 points per game in six different matches.  To make matters worse, the Cavs play sixteen games in April and nine of them are against current playoff teams.  

The Good: Donald Sloan is the lone bright spot, and even he is barely deserving of getting the nod.  Having said that, he gets it for playing relatively well in his first NBA start.

The Bad: Everything.

The Ugly: At one point during the game, Semih Erden and Josh Harrelson were vying for the a rebound.  I’m glad the NBA ditched their “I Love this Game!” slogan.